Prior to the Certified ScrumMaster seminar I attended in August 2008, I read the book by Ken Schwaber called Agile Project Management with Scrum based on a recommendation from Mishkin Berteig. After attending the seminar and becoming certified as a ScrumMaster I re-read the book. The second reading was much more valuable than the first for I had a much better understanding of Scrum. Here are my comments on this book.

What have I learned?

1. The adoption of Scrum methodology is more about changing roles and behaviours than it is about embracing a new process.

It was obvious to me and to Ken that one of the greatest challenges facing those individuals when moving from a their current environment to a scrum environment was that they would need to change their behaviours. In the former environment the team member would be directed and inspected based on what their project manager told them to do. The PM is the boss and the team members are somewhat powerless. In Scrum the team members take responsibility for their commitments and communicate their accomplishments on a daily basis. The hardest change occurs when the project manager is asked to become a ScrumMaster. The project Manager is familiar with assigning tasks and personally inspecting results. In the scrum environment they are the servants of the team, removing obstacles and facilitating the process. As Ken states in this book some project managers have great difficulty transitioning into the ScrumMaster role. They are unwilling to give up the power and position as a project master. It is hard to move from the leader of the pack to become the sheep dog herding the sheep!

2. Scrum is unforgiving for if you do not apply the fundamental principles it is likely your efforts to adopt Scrum will fail.

As I reviewed the numerous case studies Ken chronicled is was apparent that when organizations, Team members, Product Owners and ScrumMasters followed the terms, conditions and guidelines of the Scrum methodology, they tended to deliver on their commitments. When they misunderstood, misused or deleted some portion of the methodology they tended not to accomplish their objectives. The methodology is well thought out and works in many situations when used appropriately.

3. Scrum enhances individual and team expertise.

I agree and totally support Ken’s opinion about the value of Scrum. I have no doubt the individual team member is empowered and has a greater sense of achievement. Obviously based on his case studies, Ken builds a strong case that Scrum allows the team to deliver quicker. The process is more change adaptive, responsive to customer needs, timely and economical than traditional methods. Greater energy and capacity is released in the team and individual team members.

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One of my favorite books is Good to Great by Jim Collins. One of my other favorite books is Freakanomics by Steven Levitt. This article, From Good to Great … to Below Average, takes an interesting look at what has happened to the Good to Great companies in the intervening years. I found the comments to be particularly valuable to read.

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I recently started writing a book review on Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams by Alistair Cockburn. Check out the first part of my review. I have read Chapter 1 entitled Explained (View from the Outside). It was a very interesting chapter that set Crystal Clear as the answerer to Alistair Cockburn. It made many aspects of the Crystal family clear in my mind. I enjoyed the questions, and the answers were insightful and helped me to put the ideas into a whole picture.

At the moment I am reading Chapter 2 entitled Applied (The Seven Properties). Frequent Delivery, Reflective Improvement, and Osmotic Communication made sense to me and aligned somewhat to my own beliefs. When I started reading the fourth property, Personal Safety, certain parts seemed fine, while others set off warning bells. I believe that the purpose of any team is to progress. This is achieved through trust, respect and unity.

Cockburn says “Once personal safety and amicability are established, a useful, playful dynamic may emerge. People may wage competition with each other. They may argue loudly, even to the verge of fighting, without taking it personally. In the case where someone does take it personally, they sort it out and set things straight again.” – page 31.

The statements above concern me. Cockburn addresses trust by saying that people will not take it personally. Respect is lost because they “… May argue loudly, even to the verge of fighting”. I would be unable to say that I respect someone if I yell at them or even raise my voice. Now unity is completely destroyed. For some reason our society and many societies around the world not only condone competition, it is seen as a way to judge attributes of excellence in an individual. This is not a good sign for our progress towards unity in human civilization.

I agree that being polite and not stating one’s opinion is harmful for trust. However, it is preferable to use consultation instead of competition. Imagine that a team is encouraged to compete with itself to achieve better results. Would there not be feelings of resentment or heightened levels of stress? Now imagine a team that is encouraged to consult and raise the team together without focusing on individual success. Would not this team feel excited to be around each other? Would they become fast friends and grow as a unit? Would family members of the team be enthusiastic to be included in picnics and socials?

Now the big question:What is better, individual success or team unity that add value to not only the team but all who interact with them?

I will continue to read this book and post my reviews. I find it interesting that this book has helped to see the confusion that is happening all around the world in terms of progress, success, and human development.

I welcome any comments on my posts.

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I have just started reading Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams by Alistair Cockburn. I was not too sure what this book would provide for me in the way of relevant learning.

I am intrigued that this work came out of years of experience by Alistair. This quote from the book “Crystal Clear does not aspire to be a “best” methodology; it aspires to be “sufficient,” in order that your team will shape it to itself and then actually use it.” gave me hope. I work on a small team and I wonder about which practices will best suit our situation. I also wonder how our team can use tools and processes then reflect on their usefulness to decide if we will continue their implementation.

I am interested in reading the whole book, but a little concerned that there will be too much techno-words used throughout. I have a background in business, marketing, and the web but not to the degree of the some of the other books that I have read.

What learning have you gained from working on small teams? Have any of you read this book? If so, did you gain any insights that would help my team to develop?

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I have been reading a book entitled “Agile Project Management with Scrum” by Ken Schwaber. It is an interesting read. The examples and stories that he shares of companies who have struggled with Scrum and those that have succeeded are fantastic. The way Schwaber breaks up the book and explains all the roles then gives example makes it a great learning tool. It is also really funny and clever.

One complaint I have with the book is that it is very technical, it seems that the reader is assumed to have many years of software development experience. It is interesting that the projects that Schwaber discusses that have the most trouble with Scrum are those that are “stuck” in their old ways of working. It’s almost as if the old saying of “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing” is true for Scrum implementations. “Scrum means doing things in small cycles – so I will do everything the same except in shorter cycles.” Anybody ever heard of that type of reasoning?

I definitely recommend this book for those who have considerable experience in the technology field. For those who don’t this book might be challenging at times, espcially with the computer language words that are used.

I want to continually learn for my own personal and professional growth. So IÂ would like to know which books do you suggest? Are there any books that share examples and stories that are not focused on software development? If you disagree which my review of the book please comment.

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It has been a long time since I read a book in a single day. Yesterday I started and finished reading “The Brain that Changes Itself” by Norman Doidge, MD. As an educator, father and individual interested in self improvement, I was absolutely astounded by most of what I read. As an agile methods coach, I discovered some important, directly applicable ideas. Read on for a review of this book.

I’ve read a lot of books lately about agile, organizations, teams, work systems, lean, etc. This one really stands out: “The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization” by Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith. Right now, there is a huge discussion on the ScrumDevelopment Yahoo! group about, among other things, the importance of Self-Organizing teams in the definition of Agile/Scrum. Without doubt, this book demonstrates over and over that Self-Organization is a critical component of high performance “real” teams. I haven’t yet finished the book, but already it is proving invaluable to me as an Agile coach, inside my family, and in my understanding about how to develop my own business. The following is an extract from the book:

In Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell, there is a chapter that describes a number of fascinating experiments. These experiments show how we can be influenced by very subtle cues in our environment. This is a very important lesson for us to apply in our work environments and in particular in our agile work.

If you are given a problem to solve, how much does the presentation of that problem matter to your ability to solve it? Imagine that it’s a simple problem… imagine that it is presented in two different ways, both of them simple. It turns out that presentation differences can still make a huge difference. In fact, there is a way to present problems that makes them substantially easiers to solve: make them people problems.

I have just started reading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I found it interesting how affirming it is of the first of the Agile Axioms. The following are all quotations taken from the first couple of chapters of the book:

Through my own experience – and that of countless others that I have shared – I have come to believe that creativity is our true nature…

What you are doing is creating pathways in your consciousness through which the creative forces can operate. Once you agree to clearing these pathways, your creativity emerges. In a sense, your creativity is like your blood. Just as blood is a fact of your physical body and nothing you invented, creativity is a fact of your spiritual body and nothing that you must invent.

And few ideas are worse than the ones we have about art.

Why should we all use our creative power . . . ? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money. (Brenda Ueland)

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